[Intro music]

Hello. I'm Michael Aranda and starting next week Crash Course Film is going to get critical. Not like, mission critical.

What I mean is, we're going to start thinking about specific films, critically. Analyzing them for story, performance, technique, meaning, purpose, and historical importance. We're going to talk about why we look deeper into movies. Why they're important to us as individuals and as a society. 

But movies are tricky and studying them isn't always about liking or disliking, loving or hating, good or bad. Movies are emotionally potent pieces of art and sometimes we kind of have to wade through the emotional experience of viewing the movie before we can really start to study it.

So, that's what we're going to do. 

But, why? Why do we need to look deeper? Can't we just enjoy what we enjoy and not analyze something to death? 

Of course you can! Dude, no rules! But understanding how movies are working to manipulate your emotions or where the filmmakers are coming from to tell the story they're trying to tell, can help you understand more about, well, lots of things. 

Things like history, economics, class struggles, race and gender inequalities, or even grief. Think about DW Griffith's views on race and how they helped create a deeply awful picture of black Americans during the Civil War in Birth of a Nation.

Or about Lois Webber's confused views on contraception that led to an equally confused yet powerful film, Where Are My Children?, that we'll talk about in this series.

So, there's a lot to take in. But don't worry. It'll be fun and hopefully educational. 

Since this is our film first criticism series, we want to talk about a wide range of movies, from blockbusters to indie darlings, from action thrillers to deep studies of character and social commentaries. 

We'll be starting with Orson Welles' classic, Citizen Kane, to try to answer the questions, "What makes for a great movie?" and "Is Citizen Kane the best movie of all time?" 

Spoiler alert, it's not. Or is it?

We'll be looking at 80's cultural phenomenons like James Cameron's Aliens and modern Oscar winners like Moonlight. We'll tackle quiet comedies, thoughtful war dramas, and revenge flicks. All culminating in Stanley Kubrick's cerebral 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film many people feel is incomprehensible. 

Spoiler alert, it's not. Or is it?

There's a complete list of the films we'll be going through in the doobly-doo. So have a look and join us here next week for our first episode of Crash Course Film Criticism, which is produced in collaboration with our wonderful friends at PBS digital studios. 

[Outro music]